New Hashima: True Grit in Old City

New Hashima takeover week on BrickNerd continues with an article by guest contributor Mike Willhoit who coordinated the “Old City” Sector of New Hashima. He writes about the planning and effort that gave the sector a gritty edge, making it the seedier side of the cyberpunk city.

True Grit

When we began planning for New Hashima, I had always envisioned a sector of the city that felt noticeably older, grittier, and grungier than the rest of the city. Every place seems to have something like this: older-style buildings, less up-to-date infrastructure, and maybe even a kind of modernist, planned community feel to it. I landed on this idea because there are layers to every city. Time periods collide in awkward ways, new stuff gets strapped on and piled onto old stuff, and it really just creates this unique vibe that I think is quintessentially cyberpunk. The keyword is palimpsest; ornate styles of buildings covered in technology from a new era. One of those technologies we applied over the Old City came by mode of transportation.

One of my favorite angles. Great depth of field, feels like the city goes on forever

When planning this sector, I wanted to create a place that felt intertwined and overlapped with movement and layers. As a result, the plan for Old City was based on transit. We incorporated a monorail that looped the big island and a train line loop that entered and exited the inner city. The actual route through Old City wasn’t designed intentionally but allowed to develop naturally. The picture below shows the final path the transit lines had through Old City, as well as through the entirety of New Hashima.

Michael pointing to “Old-City” on the Finalized transit Map of NEW HASHIMA during a city planning meeting That Occurred prior to the offical set-up.

The more we worked on our contributions to the buildings and sub-layers, the more we added to the lore of the transit system. The only way into the Old City was on a rickety elevated train line that only made two stops, one on the small island and one on the big island—and it doesn’t stop for long. Once on the big island there was a local monorail station. Better make it before the last stop for the night or else you may find yourself somewhere… undesirable!

The deepest pocket of the Old City. In the overall display this was one of the least accessible to view, which I think worked to its advantage.

Inspiration From New Places

For the Old City, we had a giant Pinterest board and were constantly sharing inspiration images from our real-life experiences and cool art and photos we saw online. Most of what I curated dealt with grungier, grimier artwork depicting alleyways, decrepit towers, and antiquated technology. I found the art of a few people like Nivanh Chanthara and Johnny Terror super inspiring, as well as real-world locations like Kowloon Walled City and Cairo.

Syd Mead’s early artwork for Blade Runner was a constant reference for me in particular, as I sought to replicate in LEGO some of the ornate Egyptian and Chinese-styled columns and building features seen in his LA streetscapes. Art is all about synthesizing elements into your own unique take on something, and I tried to explain that as clearly as possible to everyone who contributed. We all found what inspired us and made it our own.

George’s rug shop deep in the bowels of the city

Street Basin by Ryan

Another design intention for this part of the city was to inject uniquely Middle-Eastern or African elements into its style, even if just a few key moments. Cyberpunk always seems to focus on Eastern Asia, so I felt that the Near East and the Middle East were uncharted territory for most of us.

I have had the privilege of traveling to Athens and Istanbul, two cities packed densely with modernist apartment complexes plopped on top of ancient ruins, each with its unique history. One of the most striking things I saw was a traditional Islamic foot bath on the streets, embedded into the wall of a relatively new office tower. It eventually found its way into the collab in Ryan Keeth (Rabk)’s section.

That Brings Us To “The Crew”

One of the best parts of any collaboration project is the opportunity to recruit people that you have always wanted to build alongside to help you complete your vision. For years now, I’ve been assembling like-minded builders into what I affectionally refer to as The Crew.

Though every person in this collab participated because they were top-notch builders, I recruited some specific people for Old City that I knew could build in the style I was after. These are some folks I’ve gotten to know over the years and connected with, building in the themes of Apoca-lego, military, space, and of course cyberpunk in years prior. I knew these folks had “the sauce” I was looking for to contribute to Old City in the perfect way.

There were a couple returns from the previous display at BrickFair Virginia like Tobias, George, Brian, Brailey, Jordan, and I, all of whom knew the brief super well and jumped right into it. Then there was Ryan and Jack, two historical builders I’ve also known for years, who knocked it out of the park on their first foray into cyberpunk. Zach, Cam, Joseph, Jackson, Josh and Rolf were also new to the collaboration but were seasoned builders who all made beautiful contributions that fit the vibe and seamlessly blended with one another. Finally, we have special thanks to Conner Lill, who primarily made his contributions to the Docks but was instrumental in finishing the elevated train.

Hard at work

The process of putting together this gargantuan project was amazing. I think what really made this sector work was how carefully everyone worked to blend their cubes into their neighbors’ cubes. There was near-constant communication between folks who shared a border. Joseph and Cam had designed a sidewalk that wrapped around their buildings. Ryan, Brian, and I all had a continuous walkway and overlapping structures that were carefully measured from pages of photos to ensure that they lined up perfectly on-site. You could barely tell where one cube started and another cube ended. Brian even went the extra mile to build a portion of George’s Dragon Apartments on his cube so that when it was all slotted into place, you could barely tell that it wasn’t attached.

Despite our best efforts to align everything and perfectly assemble on the first try, there were still inevitable hiccups. They were stressful for a moment, but honestly, the ad hoc solutions we found on-site are really what this hobby is all about.

Oh The Humanity

For starters, Jack’s cube came to us completely ruined. He had been so confident in his packing ability that before he shipped it out, he decided to take a video of himself giving it a solid kick to show us that afterward, nothing was rattling! George and Ryan had to fully rebuild it on-site. In the process, we also found that his monorail tunnel didn’t quite work, so we quickly fixed that by ripping a wall off and modifying it. Silver linings.

Zach’s pagoda and shanty island came in a similar state of disrepair, however this ended up being one of my favorite moments. We had a “ThugLUG” cameo in the form of Ben. He forcefully reconfigured Zach’s whole island on-site when it was found that it simply could not fit underneath the railroad as planned. It was a chopped-and-screwed remix of a classic.

The destroyed remnants of the old world

Josh’s dead mall, half sunken in the shallows of Old City, was well and truly dead on arrival. Dan, Kevin, and I took hours to revive it, and we did a decent job. Fortunately, it was intended to look destroyed and run-down, so our not reassembling it correctly only added to the aesthetic.

Then there were the train tracks that Connor helped us get up and running, as well as the monorail. George had an original monorail setup for our big island, and every member that had a cube with that monorail running through it had the challenge of making sure it ran properly through it, but also still look amazing. There were some issues on-site that we had to iron out, but the accomplishment of getting both the train and that monorail running made us feel like real champions.

What Is Old Is New Again

I could literally talk about the Old City for days, but we don’t have that kind of time. Thanks to Stefan, Simon, and Mason for being excellent co-leaders of the “New Hashima Daemons”, thanks to all of “The Crew” (a.k.a. “The Old City Boiz”), and thanks to Based God and to everyone who made this possible.

Old City in the Foreground

While the majority of New Hashima was built with a vision of a cyberpunk future ripe with technology and soaring towers, Old City showed where the civilization had been and where it could go. In a way, it kind of represented the older collab from ten years ago with the rest of the city paying homage to its roots. As they say, what’s old is new again, especially in Old City.

Read more about New Hashima in our series of takeover articles, and stay tuned for more to come soon!

The Story of New Hashima: How The Colossal LEGO Cyberpunk City Came To Be

A collab within a collab? What are your thoughts on mixing architectural styles and sci-fi? Let us know in the comments below.

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